Dear Parents, 'Sharenting' Is Ruining Your Kids' Lives

Please, please, please stop.

If you grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s, be grateful that your parents didn't have access to the Internet because, thanks to "sharenting," parents today are ruining their children's future.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, sharenting is when parents share too much information about their children online.

It's one thing if you occasionally post a picture or two of your child at his birthday party or a video of her taking her first steps. But once you share picture after picture of moments that might embarrass the kid later on, you're officially a sharent.

To a degree, it's not sharents' fault. According to The Guardian, most of those who overshare on social media are 35 and over, so it only seems natural to share their child's life online because they were using social media from early on. Millennial parents, it seems, have followed in their footsteps.

It's time for a wake up call.

A new video from Cracked explores why sharenting could be ruining your child's life. You may not think it, or maybe you refuse to believe it, but there are several reasons why sharenting is a thing that needs to become a thing of the past.

Dear parents,

Yes, many people enjoy seeing videos and photos of babies doing adorable things, but when a parent shares too much it becomes a problem.

First, isn't it strange that if and when a photo of your child goes viral, you'll have random people commenting on your child's looks, what they're wearing, what they may or may not be eating, etc.? There may even be people leaving rude comments on the otherwise innocent photo.

Like some of the comments on this photo.

The world can be a cruel place and we need to protect our kids, not put them out there for people to write mean things about.

Let's also resolve to not publicly shame our kids by posting their punishments online.

For the most part, kids who are publicly shamed are older. So when a prospective employer looks one of them up online, that employer is all too likely to find a picture of the time the kid had to stand on a street corner with a sign around their neck.

How can this be fixed? Just don't do it.

And then there are the embarrassing, cringeworthy photos that almost always involve someone who is naked.

The poor child.

Just remember that whatever you put on the Internet will stick around forever so even if you decide to delete an embarrassing photo of your child, chances are there's another copy of it somewhere in the depths of the Internet.

Check out the video and determine for yourself whether or not sharenting is OK.